Truth Time: The Story of MY Journey Into Aging Alone

Are you aging alone . . by yourself . . without the benefit or support of spouse, kids, parents, siblings, close friends . . or with the benefit of emotionally self-involved and/or “distant” spouse, kids, parents, siblings, friends . . alone?

Me too. Well, not exactly now, but I was for many years . . alone.

And actually, I still am . . just not in the same way.

Maybe you can relate to my story:

After my marriage crashed and burned back in the 80′s, I spent most of my time pushing the people who cared about me away. (Not the smartest move, but totally effective in isolating oneself to better soak up the aloneness and roll around in all the self disgust and ‘what a failure of a wife I’d been’ stuff.)

It took a long, long time for me to realize how much that wasn’t working for me and to start dumping the self-blame, self-hatred, and self-pity.

It wasn’t easy, either, because letting go of all that gup forced me to open my eyes to the reality of what my life had become in the years since my marriage started spiraling downward – a vast, pit of aloneness . . mostly self-created through all that pushing away stuff I’d been doing.

(Okay, the earlier stuff = not smart . . but emotionally driven stuff rarely is. Besides, the eye-opening part was a much more positive step than all the mind-closing I was doing before . . even though mind opening is rarely attached to warm, comfy loving kindness-type feelings toward oneself . . at least at the start.)

So there I was: Over 40, and for all intents and purposes, aging alone. Well, not exactly alone . . but like I said, for all intents and purposes . .

• Spouse? . . Ex-spouse, thank you . . Dead to my world. Me? = unwanted, unloved, unloveable (I‘d become a real bitch, thank you), and on and on and on, ALONE.
• Kids? . . My dog died in the middle of the break-up . . just another reason that ex-spouse-type-person was dead to my world. Me? = childless, no one to whom to pass my legacy, no one to care for or about me in my old age . . or even in my middle-heading-toward-old-age, ALONE.
• Parents? . . O come now . . In my inner world of inner worlds, I was my poor aging parents’ ultimate life disappointment (okay, I was a self-involved drama queen . . so, deal with it!!). Actually, though, being the first and only parents  in my vast extended family  to have a child divorce throughout the most recent millennium (that’s 1,000 years), they walked on eggshells around me and were afraid to open their mouths for fear of setting me up to label their kind words as “I-told-you-so’s”. Me = the failure, the disappointment, the let down, ALONE.
• Siblings? . . My only sibling, my brother . . the perfect child with the perfect marriage and perfect children (at least in my head). I hated him. No, I loved him. I was just totally jealous of him  and all he had and all he’d become . . and all I hadn’t (at least in my head) . Me = everything my brother wasn’t, push that reminder away lest it eats me alive, ALONE.
• Friends? . . Okay, some of them were divorced failures, too. But they had children to focus on. They weren’t truly alone. Besides, I was supposed to be such a role model (at least in my head). I didn’t dare let them know what a let down I was. Me = isolated, unreachable, untouchable, ALONE.
• Strangers with Potential? . .  Yeah, like I wasn’t going to recognize that trick! Actually, I’d become such a shrew (maybe venus flytrap is a better analogy) that – should any unfortunate male open his mouth in my direction to say anything at all, I climbed right down his unsuspecting throat and yanked his tongue in after me. Me = shrew, venus flytrap, scared senseless of getting close, totally isolated, ALONE.

Do you see what I did to myself? Talk about self-involved, self-serving pap! And what did it get me?  . . . . . nothing but more ALONE. (That’s a learning point, my friend. Don’t miss it!)

Time Passes . . Change Happens

The thing is, time was passing. And we all know that everything changes as time passes. You change as time passes. I changed as time passed. And we continue to change with each passing mille-second.

And, if we’re lucky, some of that time and change bring us a pinch of understanding. (I’m a big fan of small pinches. They sting just enough to really open the eyes and prime the curiosity for what’s to come.)

Well, my curiosity-understanding-pinchy-thing was a bit of a major slap in the noggin. After all, how many years can anyone stand to sit around feeling sorry for one’s self. Enough is enough already!

That’s when I really started to recognize where I was heading in my aloneness . . pushing everyone who cared enough to give a damn . . hate me hate me hate me . . state.

I wasn’t just aging alone in the physical reality of life (i.e., spouseless, childless, soon to be parent-less, nigh unto friendless). I had completely – and unwittingly – set myself up to age alone from the inside out.

Stone by heavy stone, I had created such an impenetrable wall around myself, that I’d pretty much condemned myself to be as miserable as I could make me (because, let’s face it, I was doing this stupidity to me . . no one else could get in to help . . much less, to stop me).

I’m Aging Alone . . and it’s okay

Don’t bother asking what happened to open my eyes. Don’t ask what was said at just the right moment to connect the dots for me. Don’t ask what I experienced to bring a wave of ahaa’s into the dark corners of my unconscious world. I don’t have an answer. I just don’t know. Some things don’t need answers.

Sometimes everything that needs to line up, lines up . . the inner world comes into sync with the outer world . . and things just start making sense – or the craziness just starts being recognized as non-sense.

Then again: Sometimes a good kick in the seat, or a gentle touch and kind word set the wheels in motion.

Maybe it was all of the above for me, but I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that I am, most definitely, a woman aging alone. And it’s all okay.

It took time.

It took a lot of patience (on my part, and on the part of those who loved me enough to keep hanging in there).

It took a great, great deal of discovering new avenues for coming to terms with my history . . in order to clearly see my present . . and envision what lies ahead.

It took a bit of prying to pop the cork off my well-preserved sense of humor, so I could give myself permission to taking the whole mess so seriously and get on with living.

They say it takes a community. That may be so.

I know it took family, and old friends, and new friends, and a little help along the way from people who knew how to help me rediscover the person I’d kept hidden for so long, and critters who didn’t care a damn how totally flawed a human critter I was as long as I loved and fed them till forever.

I guess that is a community.

And what that says is that even though I’m aging alone in the physical sense of that term (i.e., no spouse, parents are gone, no children), I am very very very far from aging alone on the inside . . from aging alone as the person I was who was aging alone with the big walls no one could – or, would dare – scale.

And, the way I see it, that’s definitely okay.

How about you? Are you aging alone? If so, how’s it going? How do you define your “alone” stuff in the midst of your aging? What’s getting in your way . . what’s tripping you up . . in all that alone-ness?

Share your thoughts. Let me know what you need. I’d love to hear from you.

Keep growing my friend,

Gail

I’m going to keep this “Aging Alone” thread going for the next several posts. Subscribe to get them, or check back often. I’d hate for you to miss anything.

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Tagged as: Aging, Aging Alone, alone, aloneness, change, community, disappointment, failure, isolated, isolating, old age, understanding, unloved, unwanted